MEET THE WATER CAR -TOYOTA MIRAI

water car is no more a fairy tale. Toyota Unveils a hydrogen fuel car Mirai. It has two hydrogen fuel tanks with a capacity of 180liters. Only water drops fall on the road as a byproduct. Believe it or not, it gives a maximum range of 550km.

Since it doesn't have a J1772 plug, I'm not terribly interested. Still I know there are some enthusiasts. My Prius Prime just finished charging on the driveway from our morning trip to the dog park. For grins, it is cooling the cabin using grid power in the 85-90F heat.

Do you own or lease a fuel cell car?

The reason I ask is reports of $16/kg cost and your experience with station reliability and access.

I understand fuel cell cars often come with a 3 year(?) hydrogen fuel purchase card. If you have one, what are the terms and conditions?

Can you pre-condition, cool or heat, while the car is parked before taking it for a trip?

FYI, this is "insideevs" which means 'inside electric vehicles'. A fuel cell vehicle is not an electric vehicle that plugs into the grid. It fuels like gasoline engine cars which is different from what we do.

Many of us don't go to gas stations or in my case rarely with our plug-in cars. I visit gas stations when leaving Huntsville AL to drive cross country 700 miles to Oklahoma or Kansas or +200 miles to Tennessee. My "B" tripmeter shows ~2,500 miles since the last gas station fill-up, 11.4 gallons $2.25/gal.

How is a hydrogen fuel cell car - a "water car"? Where can one get hydrogen obtained from electrolysis? How much energy does it take to get a kilogram of hydrogen this way, and to compress it, transport it?

Something is certainly being lost in translation here. I guess he means that the car emits only water as its "exhaust," but it's not clean water. Toyota originally claimed the emission was clean enough to drink, but then Toyota spokesmen admitted nobody at Toyota had ever tried drinking it!

There is some buzz that Mirai sales are slow enough that they are being stored off-site as more continue to arrive:

The May Dashboard sales showed a distinct drop in Mirai sales which was attributed to introduction of the Honda Clarity fuel cell vehicle. But it could be there is an absolute limit to how many fuel cell vehicles can be sold in California regardless of the number of $2m fuel stations.

I do think it 's caused by Clarity since Clarity still has 2+ months waiting list.
I think Clarity fuel cell is definitely the car for me to replace my current car even by financial point of view. Here is my calculation:
Price include tax ~18,000
Gas cost for my current car is ~18c/mi. I drive ~50k for three years. That's 9k fuel.
5k state incentive.
So the extra cost for a new upper-trim car is 18-9-5=4k for three years. It's a steal.

I do think it 's caused by Clarity since Clarity still has 2+ months waiting list.
I think Clarity fuel cell is definitely the car for me to replace my current car even by financial point of view. Here is my calculation:
Price include tax ~18,000
Gas cost for my current car is ~18c/mi. I drive ~50k for three years. That's 9k fuel.
5k state incentive.
So the extra cost for a new upper-trim car is 18-9-5=4k for three years. It's a steal.

Click to expand...

Looking forward to seeing photos of the paperwork. Just cut out the personal information parts.